Pages

In Bunnell v. Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) EFF filed a brief with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals arguing that federal wiretapping law protects emails from unauthorized interception while they are temporarily stored on the email servers that transmit them.

In this copyright infringement case the district court issued a dangerous ruling compelling TorrentSpy to create and store logs of its users' activities as part of electronic discovery obligations in a civil lawsuit.

Defending free speech and privacy EFF has helped the ACLU and an unnamed Internet service provider (ISP) challenge the constitutionality of "National Security Letters" (NSLs) a key power under the USA PATRIOT Act.

EFF has asked a federal court to reject efforts by Echostar to get the names and addresses of every customer that purchased a free-to-air satellite receiver. Echostar claims that the receiver can be modified to pirate DISH satellite TV programming.

EFF along with Google and numerous other public interest organizations and Internet industry associations asked a federal court Tuesday to block a government attempt to access the contents of a Yahoo! email account without a search warrant based on probable cause.

EFF urged the United States Supreme Court to uphold an appeals court decision that blocks invasive and unnecessary background checks at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) arguing that the over-collection of personal data puts employees' privacy at risk.

EFF has urged a California state court to suppress evidence gathered by law enforcement from a suspect's iPhone during a warrantless search including phone book contacts called phone numbers emails text messages Internet search history and photos.

EFF and attorney Bryan Vroon have asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit to reexamine a panel ruling that violated a whistleblower's Fourth Amendment right to privacy in his email communications.

EFF have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to focus on the privacy issues at stake in a battle over the sale and data mining of medical records urging justices to reverse a ruling that could jeopardize patient privacy.

This page collects pleadings and other information from the multi-district litigation that apply to all of the cases or that are not otherwise included in the specific case pages for the multi-district litigation arising from the warrantless wiretapping.

The forced collection of DNA samples from arrestees without search warrants violates their Fourth Amendment right to privacy, the Electronic Frontier Foundation told a federal appeals court in an amicus brief filed in Jul

Can the government force people who are arrested – but not yet convicted of a crime – to give a DNA sample without a search warrant, or does that violate the Fourth Amendment? One arrestee is asking the U.S.

EFF and the ACLU of Northern California filed suit in federal court on January 14, 2009 to protect the privacy and free speech rights of two San Francisco Bay Area community organizations after the groups' computers were seized and the data copied by federal and local law enforcement.

EFF filed an amicus brief in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in support of Ricky Wahchumwah, a tribal member of the Yakima Nation who was suspected of selling bald and gold eagle feathers in violation of federal law.

A Boston College computer science student has asked a Massachusetts court to quash an invalid search warrant for his dorm room that resulted in campus police illegally seizing several computers an iPod a cell phone and other technology.

To protect your privacy, EFF supported the prosecution of an email provider who illegally copied his customers' incoming mail to his own email account. After a federal court misinterpreted the Wiretap Act and dismissed criminal charges, EFF and several other groups filed briefs endorsing the federal government's request for a rehearing of the case. The First Circuit Court of Appeals obliged and overturned the previous ruling, making it criminal for email providers to snoop on your email during transmission.

EFF helped preserve the legal protections for actually private websites while protecting your right to read public websites.

This case involved a lawsuit against DirecTV for accessing the public website of anti-DirecTV activists run by plaintiff Michael Snow. The website had a banner and purported Terms of Service forbidding DirecTV representatives from entering the site or using its message board, but it was configured such that anyone in the public could enter the site, create a profile, and use the board. Setting aside a privacy-destroying lower court decision, the Eleventh Circuit agreed with EFF's arguments and ruled that web sites are protected by the Stored Communications Act, except when they are configured to be readily accessible to the general public.

After EFF intervened in the case, an Oklahoma school superintendent dropped his attempt to unmask the identities of a website operator and all registered users of an Internet message board devoted to discussion of local public schools. The superintendent sued anonymous speakers who criticized him on an online message board. As part of the case, he filed a broad subpoena seeking to identify the site's creator and everyone who had posted or even registered on the site, violating First Amendment protections for anonymous speech and association. EFF filed a motion to quash the subpoena on behalf of the site's operator and a registered user, and the superintendent responded by dismissing the case.

In May 2011, EFF partnered with the ACLU and the ACLU of Vermont to urge the Vermont Supreme Court to authorize courts to impose limitations on the police's ability to search computers and other forms of electronic evidence.

EFF defended online journalists and their rights to protect the confidentiality of sources as offline reporters do.

Apple Computer sued several unnamed individuals, called "Does," who allegedly leaked information about an upcoming product to online news sites PowerPage and AppleInsider. As part of its investigation, Apple subpoenaed Nfox -- PowerPage's email service provider -- for communications and unpublished materials obtained by PowerPage publisher Jason O'Grady. EFF successfully defended the journalists -- a California state appeals court held that they were protected by California's reporter's shield law and the constitutional privilege against disclosure of confidential sources. The court also held that Apple's subpoena to Nfox was unenforceable because it violated the federal Stored Communications Act.

EFF joined the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Foundation and the ACLU Foundation of Texas in backing a judge who required a search warrant before approving the seizure of two months of cell phone location data by law enforcement. In this case, the government asked a magistrate judge to ap

In October 2013, NY State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman issued a sweeping subpoena seeking identification, financial, and other information on effectively all New York Airbnb “Hosts,” those users offering living space for rent.

EFF urged a federal district court in Colorado to block the government's attempt to force a woman to enter a password into an encrypted laptop, arguing that it would violate her Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination.

EFF and EarthRights International (ERI) are fighting to quash subpoenas issued by Chevron Corporation to three email providers (Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft) demanding identifying information about the users of more than 100 email accounts, including environmental activists, journalists, and att

Along with EFF-Austin, the Texas Civil Rights Project and the ACLU of Texas, EFF urged the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to rule that a person has an expectation of privacy in the contents of their cell phone even when the phone is out of their control or custody.

EFF urged the Washington State Supreme Court to recognize that text messages are “the 21st Century phone call” and require that law enforcement obtain a warrant before reading texts on someone’s phone.

EFF submitted an amicus brief to the Rhode Island Supreme Court, arguing that people have an expectation of privacy in text message conversations, regardless of whether that conversation is stored on the their own phone or someone else's.

Together with the ACLU and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, EFF filed an amicus brief arguing police needed to obtain a search warrant in order to monitor a car's location with a GPS device.

Military investigators with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service ("NCIS") launched an investigation into online criminal activity by anyone in the state of Washington without limiting their search to military personnel or computers.

EFF filed an amicus brief in the Supreme Court arguing that individuals should be able to bring so-called facial challenges to laws that violate the Fourth Amendment by authorizing unconstitutional warrantless searches.

EFF fought the government's attempts to track the location of a mobile phone user without sufficient evidence.

The government had argued that it did not need to show probably cause that a crime was being committed. Consistent with EFF's brief, a federal magistrate judge in New York rejected the government's arguments, calling them "unsupported," "misleading," "contrived," and a "Hail Mary." Since there, several judges have made similar rulings.

EFF urged the United States Supreme Court to ensure that modern communications methods such as text messages retain the constitutional privacy protections applied to earlier technologies in an amicus brief filed in City of Ontario v. Quon.

EFF and the ACLU of Southern California each sent California Public Records Act requests to the Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department seeking documents about each agency's use of Automated License Plate Reader (ALPR) systems—sophisticated

Army officials were investigating a contractor for theft and other misconduct arising from Army contracts. In 2003, they obtained a search warrant seeking computer files and records from the company's outside accountant, Stavros Ganias.

A federal magistrate judge in San Jose, California denied a government request for historical cell site records, ordering the government to seek a search warrant for the information. The government appealed this order to U.S.

The California Electronic Communications Privacy Act (CalECPA), S.B. 178, requires state law enforcement to get a warrant before they can access electronic information about who we are, where we go, who we know, and what we do.

In the digital age, repressive governments do not act alone to violate human rights. They have accomplices—often Western technology companies—with the sophistication and technical know-how that those repressive governments lack.

In this case, the US government is demanding Apple bypass the lock screen of a seized iPhone under the All Writs Act, a general-purpose law passed in 1789 that allows a court to require third parties’ assistance to execute a prior order of the court.

A U.S. federal magistrate judge has ordered Apple to break the security of an iPhone as part of the investigation into the 2015 San Bernardino shootings. Apple is fighting the order which would compromise the security of all its users around the world.

Microsoft sued the Department of Justice (DOJ) in April 2016 challenging portions of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) that allow the government to serve a warrant on the company to get access to customers’ emails and other information stored on remote servers—al

Defendant Aaron Graham was suspected in a series of armed robberies around Baltimore. Without a warrant, police obtained 221 days of historical cell site location information about Graham from Sprint, which detailed 29,000 location points, an average of 100 data points a day.

In January 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously confirmed that Americans have constitutional protections against GPS surveillance by law enforcement, holding that GPS tracking is a "search" under the Fourth Amendment.

EFF urged the high court of Massachusetts to protect the rights of passengers in cars that law enforcement are tracking with GPS surveillance technology, arguing that both the driver and the passenger of a car have legal standing to challenge the collection of sensitive location data gathered by